Most everyone knows the plot to this movie very well. Freddy Krueger, a local child molester gets burned alive in his boiler room by a group of angry parents of Elm Street when the legal system failed to put him away. Freddy then comes back in the form of nightmares in the heads of the Elm Street children and picks them off one by one. Nancy, one of the kids, suspects that it is indeed this odious man who is the cause for all the murders, but everyone else thinks the murders are causing her to go insane.
This movie is the result of pure geinus. Say what you want about Freddy Krueger's movies, but few can argue that any horror monster in the history of horror movies has a more sinisterly creative and complicated orgin as he does (an orgin which is full of many interesting twists and revealed in the later movies). Also, while many horror movies have you screaming at the stupidity of the horror heroines/heros actions (such as following demonic voices, going into haunted houses, etc.)....you absoultely can not do it here because after all, the heros are dreaming. Also, Freddy is probably the most effective horror monster ever invented simply because there is no escaping him. You can run from ambling Frankenstein. You can drive a stake through Dracula's heart. But when it all comes down to it, you HAVE to sleep. And that is why Freddy Krueger will forever surpass any of the classic horror monsters and Nightmare on Elm Street will forever be considered a horror classic for years to come.
